150 YEARS AGO: General orders martial law in Missouri

ST. LOUIS — Maj. Gen. John Fremont ordered martial law in Missouri in a decree that freed the slaves of active secessionists and directed that guerrilla fighters were to be shot when captured.

The provisional government of the state wasn’t able to keep order, Fremont declared. “Its disorganized condition, helplessness of civil authority, and the total insecurity of life and devastation of property by bands of murderers and marauders who infest nearly every county in the State ... and who find an enemy wherever they find plunder finally demand the severest measures to repress the daily increasing crimes and outrages which are driving off the inhabitants and ruining the state,” Fremont declared.

The order against guerrillas would be enforced on the St. Louis side of a line from Fort Leavenworth, Kan., to Jefferson City, Rolla, Ironton, and finally to Cape Girardeau.

The property of “those who shall take up arms against the United States or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part with their enemies in the field is declared confiscated to public use and their slaves if any they have are hereby declared free men.”

»

ST. LOUIS — Amid a rising criticism, Brig. Gen. John Pope suspended his order imposing the costs of chasing guerrillas on the counties where attacks took place.

Pope had established a Committee of Public Safety in each county in the District of North Missouri, which included most of Central Missouri. Each five-member committee included three or more wealthy secessionists who would be made personally responsible for paying damages caused by bushwhackers.

The policy had drawn numerous complaints, including a letter from Provisional Gov. Hamilton Gamble to President Abraham Lincoln asking for it to be revoked.

In his decree suspending the policy, Pope struck a defiant tone, arguing his policy had helped quiet the region. And he closed with a note of foreboding: “It is proper, however, to warn the people of North Missouri and of the entire military district over which the commanding general in North Missouri has control that any abuse of this leniency will be instantly followed by results far more severe and difficult to bear than any which are now objected to.”

»

JEFFERSON CITY — Richard Vaughn wrote to Frank Blair, warning him to make sure that Alfred Jones of Lafayette County was not released from imprisonment at the Federal Arsenal.

Vaughn wrote that he, along with two men from Lexington whom he trusted, believed “it would be highly impolitic to release Jones at this time, knowing him, as we do, to be one of the most active, unscrupulous and influential among the secessionists of the county.”

At Lexington, Vaughn wrote, “the rebel force was being constantly augmented by recruits from the adjacent counties. You are the man that we rely on, for assistance, and in order to be effective it must be speedy.”

»

HUNTSVILLE — W.D. Malone defended Capt. John Poindexter against robbery charges in a letter to the St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican.

Poindexter, with 20 men, seized three trunks full of gold in midafternoon and took Adam Hendrix, cashier of the Fayette branch of the Bank of Missouri, and Robert Prewitt, one of the directors of the bank, as prisoners in a raid at Allen. Poindexter took the men to Milton, then went to Fayette to return the money, Malone wrote. Once the money was back in the bank, he wrote, Hendrix and Prewitt were freed.

“The sole object of Captain Poindexter was to prevent the money going out of the state, contrary as he believed to the wishes of the stockholders,” Malone wrote.

»

COLUMBIA — Boone County had escaped the strife tearing apart communities elsewhere in the state, William Switzler wrote in an editorial in the Missouri Statesman.

“We doubt whether there is a more peaceable community in the State, and all good men out to labor to keep it so,” Switzler wrote. “Friends of the Union! Friends of Secession! Keep cool; don’t get excited and browbeat each other. Have your talks and your “war of words” but conduct them in a Christian spirit — orderly, respectfully, decently as it becomes friends and neighbors.”